Save it for Later – How do you use Twitter Favorites?

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While I was waiting for my next meeting at Microsoft today I was perusing Twitter and saved a couple of tweets using the “Favorites” option. I was using Tweetdeck to do this, but the same feature is available via the web interface and other Twitter tools. It got me thinking and wondering …

How do people use Favorites in Twitter?

While Twitter is a real-time continuously flowing stream of information there are times where great stuff is coming across that I want to read. However, I just cannot take the time at the moment to read it. Fortunately there is at least one way to capture that Tweet for later use. I use the Twitter Favorites option. What do you use? How do you save Tweets for later?

image For those too young to remember the band “The English Beat” take a look at their hit song “Save it for Later.” For those wondering why I reference a song in this blog title – it’s just the way my brain seems to remember things. As I was thinking about using Twitter Favorites this song popped into my head. I’m sure there is a whole psychology to the use of audio and visual clues for memory, but I’ll leave that for another day.

Thinking Points

If you use Twitter Favorites:

  • Do you ever UN-Favorite those tweets once you’ve read them?
  • Do you send them on as a Retweet – even though it might be hours or days old?

If you don’t use Twitter Favorites:

  • What do you use to capture great tweets that you want to review later?

I’m constantly amazed at the way people improvise and innovate in their use of Twitter. Please share what you know and please share how you save & capture Tweets for later reading, retweeting, or other uses. Post a comment here, tweet me, or sent e-mail.

clip_image002 About The Author:
I have spent the better part of the last 16 years working in various aspects of the ECM space. I spent time at Kofax, Microsoft, FileNet, K2, and most recently Captaris (which was acquired by Open Text in Nov 2008). Prior to that I was a Unix VAR running my own company. Follow me on Twitter, check my blog, send email or find me on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Creative Commons License

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Comments

Anonymous said…
Twitter Favorites are public content. When I realized that, I started to think about visitors to my profile and how Favorites could convey meaningful information. Here are some other ideas for using Twitter Favorites that can provide additional value for visitors to your Twitter profile and your blog:

http://saieva.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/the-most-overlooked-feature-of-twitter/

Regards,

Sal.
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Salvatore Saieva
March 19, 2009 at 6:02 PM
Damon said…
I just did some (what I think was) interesting research on how people use favorites as their network grows.

You can see the pretty graphs here (http://dcortesi.com/2009/03/04/10-crazy-favoriting-twitter-users/) but long story short is that as people's network tends to grow, they appear to be less likely to use favorites.
March 20, 2009 at 11:43 AM
djchuang said…
Yes, this is how I use twitter favorites - I use it as a "save it for later". I only wish to find a web app that'll automatically take my twitter favorites, follow any links, and cache them to an online notebook, and then unfavorite it.
November 23, 2009 at 6:12 AM
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